Allergenic pollen and pollinosis in Madrid☆,☆☆,★
Section snippets
Pollen count
The pollen count was made according to a previously described technique5, 6 with volumetric spore traps. A Hirst spore trap (C. F. Casella Co., London, U.K.) was used from 1979 to 1981, and a Burkard trap (Burkard Manufacturing Co., Rickmansworth, Herst., U.K.) was used from 1982 to 1993. The traps were installed on the roof of our center, which is 20 m high and is located in the east of the Madrid urban area (40° 26′ N; 3° 40′ E, 640 m above sea level), with no parks or gardens nearby. Ten
Pollen counts
The months of maximum pollen concentration were March, April, May, and June. During this period, 80% of the annual total of pollen was recorded (Fig. 1). As can be seen in Table I, in the 15 years of research, 44 different pollen grains belonging to 32 families were identified and recorded.
Fig. 2 shows a pollen calendar for 19 pollen types for which the yearly concentrations were higher than 0.4% of the
DISCUSSION
The majority of patients living in Madrid experience their pollinosis symptoms mainly during May and June. During this period the two most frequent pollen types collected in our spore trap were Quercus rotundifolia (30% of the total pollen collected in May and June) and grasses (27%). Ninety-four percent of patients with pollinosis from this geographic area showed clearly positive SPT responses to grass pollen, whereas only 14% showed a positive reaction to Quercus spp. These facts seem to
Acknowledgements
We thank Charles D. Cohen for preparation of the manuscript and the Inmunotek Laboratory for continuous support.
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Cited by (0)
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From athe General Pardiñas Center of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Madrid; and bBotanical Royal Garden, Madrid.
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Reprint requests: Javier Subiza, MD, Centro de Alergia e Inmunología Clínica, General Pardiñas, C/General Pardiñas 116, Madrid 28006, Spain.
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